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That is how business and capitalism works.

Being immoral can hurt your profits, because customers might be repulsed and boycott you. Breaking the law can hurt your profits, because the government might take action against your business.

Those are the sole reasons why you would avoid doing immoral and illegal things. If the benefit outweighs the negatives, then businesses will do those things. If they don't do it, they will lose against other businesses that are willing to do it.

Fortunately, the downsides can be quite big, which means that most of the time businesses will "stay in line". A huge boycott from the people or hard damaging actions from the government really hurts profits, so it's very rarely a profitable thing to be immoral and break the law.




Of course people can be moral actors in the business world.

"Because you might get caught" is by no means the only reason to do the right thing, even if it means leaving money on the table.

What you're describing is a sociopathic greed.




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